This little character is extremely intriguing as she demonstrates a fantastic ability to detach herself emotionally in the blink of an eye so as to avoid any kind of pain - something I feel everyone should to some degree aspire to. She's also called Winifred and happens to be the sister of Diana Crich who's death prompted Birkin's arguably insensitive exhortations regarding life and death covered in a previous post: Women in Love - The Death Instinct, Love and Tennyson. But now back to Winifred and her life lesson for us all:
She was an odd, sensitive, inflammable child, having her father's dark
hair and quiet bearing, but being quite detached, momentaneous. She was
like a changeling indeed, as if her feelings did not matter to her,
really. She often seemed to be talking and playing like the gayest and
most childish of children, she was full of the warmest, most delightful
affection for a few things--for her father, and for her animals in
particular. But if she heard that her beloved kitten Leo had been run
over by the motor-car she put her head on one side, and replied, with a
faint contraction like resentment on her face: 'Has he?' Then she took
no more notice.
...She was quite single and by herself, deriving
from nobody. It was as if she were cut off from all purpose or
continuity, and existed simply moment by moment.
...She who could never suffer, because she never formed vital connections, she who could lose the dearest things of her life and be just the same the next day, the
whole memory dropped out, as if deliberately, she whose will was so
strangely and easily free, anarchistic, almost nihilistic, who like a
soulless bird flits on its own will, without attachment or
responsibility beyond the moment, who in her every motion snapped the
threads of serious relationship with blithe, free hands, really
nihilistic...never troubled. -pp.190-91
But does that leave us hollow and wanting in some way?
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ReplyDeletethis is a very interesting post... i really like it.. there are so many people in the world who suffer because of attachments... to things, people, money.. comfort... but i dont think that a lack of attachment leaves you hollow and wanting. i think its the lack of detachment that does that to you.. so many people wander their whole lives trying to find the detachment that will allow them to be free.. giving up families, their lives as they know it.. because the pain and suffering that we all experience stems from the attachments we have because the more the attachments the more expectations and those, rarely ever get met.. even many religions further the idea that detachment is the way to moksh and freedom from reincarnation... if only we all had a little bit more of winifred in us i think we'd be a whole lot happier!
ReplyDeletethough happiness in itself is also something to perhaps moderate? because if you know happiness, you will know sadness too...
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. I think it boils down to happiness and confidence in one as an individual such that external attachments are supplementary elements designed to enrich existence rather than act as a source of suffering.
ReplyDeleteI also think that this is an extremely complex matter concerned with balance - have you ever enjoyed feeling sad? Have you ever felt some kind of satisfaction in sorrow? If we remove those connections and therefore remove that which makes us sad are we not still losing out on something that can enrich us as well-formed and rounded conscious beings?
Obviously, the danger is becoming a depressive or a melancholic trapped in a state of melancholia and unending sadness. Moderation and balance is certainly needed.
I suppose also, our notions of sadness and sorrow are in a way glamorised or
conventionalised by what we see, read and watch.
Does Pain make us capable of great things? Is it a provocation to action?